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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Collaboration is Key!

My assignment will be a little different next year.  I will be teaching middle school and 2nd grade at another building.  In order to collaborate with the homeroom, PE and Music teacher of 2nd grade, I sent them a survey to help me out.  Please feel free to look at the survey if you want (Click Here).  Here is an overview.

On page one, I explain myself and the purpose of this survey and ask for their information.  As you can see I sent this to the homeroom teachers, special ed, Music, and PE.  I also sent it to my new art coworker, Mr. Kantor (who is going to be a joy to work with) and my supervisors.  I think all of these people should be aware of my intent.


I start out asking each teacher to give a brief write up of what they are doing in class.  I have inquired about Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, PE and Music.  For this second page I also give examples of what they might right in this space.


By page three I was sure to remind them that they are helping me out a lot and how much I appreciate it.  I also have lumped months together because I don't want this to take my participants all day to fill out.  I dropped the examples as well.


Now I increased the time to three months... less description again for page four.  


Page five, they know what they are doing... the less writing the better on this page.  Still leaving little encouraging messages along the way.


The final page is the 'others'.  I asked if they take any field trips, do any performances, or field days and so on.  I also wanted to know if there are items they would like to know about me and my curriculum.  I hope to provide my essential vocabulary and concepts to them as well so they can reenforce my subject as I am doing for them. 

Now is the time to send this out.  While you are planning you lessons for the year.  I would highly suggest this to 1st, 2nd, 3rd year teachers... but more experience teachers, you would be surprised how much you can learn from asking.  It can give you a fresh look at your lessons.  

As we all know... playing the game is half the battle.  I love the idea of integrating so much that the 'core' subjects can't do without us specialist.  We (art teachers) know that, but we need to assure that EVERYONE knows that!

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